1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) load card which is used for simulating PCI loads in testing stability of motherboards.
2. Description of Related Art
In motherboard manufacturing, it is necessary to test motherboard stability, for example, when load power of the motherboard is maximal, it is necessary to test whether the motherboard is stable. The load may be a central processing unit (CPU), a hard disk drive (HDD), an optical disk drive (ODD), a floppy disk drive (FDD), a PCI device, and so on.
There are two typical methods for testing motherboard stability. By one method, actual PCI devices are inserted in the corresponding slots of the motherboard. However, it is costly to use the actual PCI devices for testing. By the other method, a card simulating a PCI load is inserted into the corresponding slot of the motherboard. However, since the card has a fixed/rated power consumption, the motherboard cannot be tested under different power conditions.
What is needed, therefore, is a PCI load card with adjustable power consumption settings for simulating different PCI loads.